Die Vögel im Naturkunde-Museum Bamberg (English shop)

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The Naturkunde-Museum Bamberg – the oldest museum in our city – owes its existence to Prince-Bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal (r. 1779–1795), who in 1791 had envisaged it as a teaching facility for the University of Bamberg. Following an extensive remodelling of the north wing of the former Jesuit college, the future collection was to be housed there. The Prince-Bishop did not live to see the completion and furnishing of the rooms, and the Napoleonic Wars delayed the project for several more years.

Only when, in the course of secularisation on 30 August 1803, the former conventual Joseph Dionys Linder took over the direction of what was now the »churfürstliches Naturalienkabinet« (from 1806 the »Königliches Naturalienkabinet«) was it able to develop into the world-renowned museum it became.

Linder as »Cabinetsdirector« was a stroke of luck for the young museum, for he had already looked after the natural history cabinet at Banz Abbey and, when the monastery was dissolved, had been able to rescue almost all of its natural history specimens – including more than 250 bird exhibits – by transferring them to the Bamberg cabinet. The Saffron Finch Sicalis flaveola (Linnaeus, 1766) from South America can still be identified today.

Linder was animated by such zeal for his cabinet that he used both his pension as a former conventual and his salary as curator almost exclusively for the acquisition of natural history specimens and for the furnishing of the cabinet. Dr Andreas Haupt, Linder’s successor in office, likewise enriched the collection with important specimens, when several rooms were added to what had originally been the single room, today known as the Vogelsaal (Bird Hall). With the exception of a few specimens, the exotic birds came into the museum under Linder and Haupt. The present-day array of native birds was assembled mainly by the fourth museum director, Dr Theodor Schneid.

Of the many birds that found their way into the Naturkunde-Museum over a period of more than 200 years, only 1,630 specimens remain; nevertheless, Bamberg possesses a taxonomically and historically important bird collection. After all, the display cases contain birds that are today regarded as globally rare or extinct, birds of which only a few exist in museum collections, birds from significant collectors and possibly also paratypes from the Brazilian expedition (1817–1820) of Johann Baptist (von) Spix.